Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. eBook

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ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY DINNER OF THE PROVIDENT
INSTITUTION FOR SAVINGS

DECEMBER 13, 1916

The history of the institution we here celebrate reaches
back more than one third of the way to the landing
of the Mayflower—­back to the day of the
men who signed the Declaration of Independence, who
saw Prescott, Pomeroy, Stark, and Warren at Bunker
Hill, who followed Washington and his generals from
Dochester Heights to Yorktown, and saw the old Bay
Colony become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
They had seen a nation in the making. They founded
their government on the rights of the individual.
They had no hesitation in defending those rights against
the invasion of a British King and Parliament, by
a Revolutionary War, nor in criticising their own
Government at Washington when they thought an invasion
of those rights was again threatened by the preliminaries
and the prosecution of the War of 1812. They
had made the Commonwealth. They understood its
Government. They knew it was a part of themselves,
their own organization. They had not acquired
the state of mind that enabled them to stand aloof
and regard government as something apart and separate
from the people. It would never have occurred
to them that they could not transact for themselves
any other business just as well as they could transact
for themselves the business of government. They
were the men who had fought a war to limit the power
of government and enlarge the privileges of the individual.

It was the same spirit that made Massachusetts that
made the Provident Institution for Savings. What
the men of that day wanted they made for themselves.
They would never have thought of asking Congress to
keep their money in the post-office. They did
not want their commercial privileges interfered with
by having the Government buy and sell for them.
They had the self-reliance and the independence to
prefer to do those things for themselves. This
is the spirit that founded Massachusetts, the spirit
that has seen your bank grow until it could now probably
purchase all there was of property in the Commonwealth
when it began its existence. I want to see that
spirit still preeminent here. I want to see a
deeper realization on the part of the people that this
is their Commonwealth, their Government; that they
control it, that they pay its expenses, that it is,
after all, only a part of themselves; that any attempt
to shift upon it their duties, their responsibilities,
or their support will in the end only delude, degrade,
impoverish, and enslave. Your institution points
the only way, through self-control, self-denial, and
self-support, to self-government, to independence,
to a more generous liberty, and to a firmer establishment
of individual rights.